The digital explosion has created opportunities for many businesses around the world, but it has also become the proverbial final nail in the coffin for some.
Email marketing provider Rocketseed, for instance, would not exist as a business had the digital communication and media environment not transformed in the way it has. And naturally it is grateful for this as it counts itself among the winners of the new media age.
Businesses that cling to the “good old days” will eventually find themselves as nothing more than relics of those good old days. To reiterate the obvious – if your business is in a sector where the product or service can be developed and delivered online, and you are not doing so, you better have a very good pension plan because that business will not be around for much longer.
In the creative space, advertising agencies were traditionally the grown-ups in the marketing universe. They had the corner office with the pot plant and, of course, the big budget. Public relations and digital marketing were nice-to-have add-ons if the budget allowed. The production process for advertising campaigns often required large teams, with each team member offering a specific expertise, which added to the overall huge production costs of these campaigns.
Today, anyone with a Mac who uses more of the left hemisphere of their brain than the right can be a competitor for an ad agency. The line between digital, public relations and advertising agency exists mainly in how we define our businesses – but clients do not see these businesses the way we do; they have shifted their focus to impact. Not only are they singing more and more of “sell my product for goodness’ sake and you can win the Loeries later”, they also want it done across all platforms, and done well.
An epic campaign with the potential to win awards also needs to fulfil a basic business need – it has to add value to the business over the short term by contributing to the bottom line, and over the long term by building brand value. PR practitioners who have convinced themselves that their job is simply to create the groundwork to make the task of selling easier are deluding themselves. I am sure you have seen many a strategy document with that tired, standard PR objective: “to create awareness” – as if there is a business that can bring in customers when no one knows the business exists in the first place!
These are all ghosts of Christmas past. The change that clients need is not just better strategic input into their businesses, but a clear link to contribution to the bottom line. Create awareness all you like, but if no one is going to buy what I am selling, what is the point? Yes, awareness is the starting point, and I have heard all about building credibility, but you have got to take me to that promised land – a land of rands and cents.
The media landscape pie was nicely divvied up into “owned media”, consisting of company-owned media platforms such as newsletters; “earned media” – that which any half-competent PR practitioner should be able to get you: “free” publicity; and “bought media” – the space where the ad agencies’ content finds its way to billboards, radio and newspapers.
But now someone is seriously messing with this harmonious natural order of things. They are using owned media – your email – to integrate both your earned media as well as your bought media. The leader in this pack of disruptive technologies is Rocketseed, started in South Africa and now operating in Australia and the United Kingdom, and serving some of South Africa’s most recognisable brands like Nedbank and Vodacom, among others.
What Rocketseed is doing is changing the game completely. It does not care where the chatter starts – all it is interested in is making sure that chatter gets to everyone who needs to hear it, and that it gets there fast!
And the problem does not end there for those old-school PR gurus and creative ad doyens. Rocketseed can also do the creative development of campaigns as well – at a fraction of the cost. This is the game-changer of the next decade for the marketing industry, and digital, PR and ad people better wake up and pay attention or we will all soon have to attend the AA-style support groups that many old-economy businesses are becoming accustomed to.
Shoni Makhari is the CEO of Flow Public Relations. Rocketseed is a former client of Flow; this should not be construed as a cry for help.